CAIT to launch campaign to boycott Chinese goods from June 10

Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) stated on Sunday that it would launch a nationwide campaign to boycott Chinese goods across the country from June 10.

This development comes amid recent border tensions between India and China. 

CAIT, representing 7 crore traders and 40,000 trade associations, explained that the campaign is designed to motivate traders to not sell Chinese goods, but also get Indian consumers to buy Indian products.

Notably, the traders' body has been continuously campaigning from time to time for the period of last four years for boycotting Chinese products fuelled by the Make in India' programme pushed by Narendra Modi, CAIT Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said.

Through such efforts, CAIT is aiming for a reduction in India's imports of Chinese goods by about USD 13 billion by 2021. It has also prepared a list of  3,000 products imported from China for which Indian substitutes are available.

The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) stated in a press release on May 24 that the retail business suffered a loss of 9 lakh crore since the start of the coronavirus-necessitated lockdown on March 24.  

Explaining the reasoning behind the low footfalls at markets, It stated that people are not much inclined to come out for shopping because of fear of COVID-19.

CAIT pointed out that the 'financial load on traders in a state when there is an acute crunch of finances will certainly be going to kill the retail trade of the country'. It further lamented that neglect of traders both by central and state governments will deepen the crisis.